User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Page rendered in 1.5634 seconds
81 querie(s) executed
Baseball Primer Newsblog
— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Subway ‘jumper’ Van Slyke gets fined
All the bushleague batters
Are left to die
Van Slyke was trying to get back to the Tigers’ Manhattan hotel with his family Saturday night. He said that the subway tickets he bought for him and his wife wouldn’t work, so they finally jumped the turnstyle.
The only problem was that two police officers saw them, and handed each of the Van Slykes a $60 fine.
“They had us standing there, and people were walking by pointing at us, and yelling, ‘Jumpers! Jumpers!’ ‘’ Van Slyke said Sunday morning. “It’s great. It’s New York City. A guy walked by and said, ‘Andy, I don’t think I can get an autograph now, can I?’ ‘’
Thanks to Fanhouse.
Support BBTF
My Bookmarks
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks.
Hot Topics
Newsblog: NYT: Kilgannon: Why Short Al From Brooklyn, Talkative Fan, Calls No More
(19 - 3:00pm, Jul 05)
Last: Rich Rifkin
(19 - 3:00pm, Jul 05)
Last: Rich Rifkin
Newsblog: seattlePI.com: Buhner 'still bleeds Mariners blue'
(15 - 2:43pm, Jul 05)
Last: Vander Wal Generator (Juan V)
(15 - 2:43pm, Jul 05)
Last: Vander Wal Generator (Juan V)
Newsblog: tampabay.com: Tampa Bay Rays minor-league affiliate's Ladies Night promotion causing a stir
(7 - 2:37pm, Jul 05)
Last: SteveF
(7 - 2:37pm, Jul 05)
Last: SteveF
Newsblog: Plain Dealer/Pluto: Matt LaPorta is still in the minors because of Grady Sizemore's cranky elbow
(8 - 2:35pm, Jul 05)
Last: Tripon
(8 - 2:35pm, Jul 05)
Last: Tripon
Newsblog: Cincinnati Enquirer/Fay: Please don't mortgage future
(4 - 2:21pm, Jul 05)
Last: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Griffin (Vlad)
(4 - 2:21pm, Jul 05)
Last: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Griffin (Vlad)
About Baseball Think Factory | Write for Us | Copyright © 1996-2008 Baseball Think Factory
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
It's fun to watch the tourists fumble with the metrocard. I admit I get a sick pleasure from it. I once had a friend get so drunk he couldn't get his card to work so he tried to jump. He literally got one inch off the ground and slammed his thighs against the turnstile. It was so pathetic, the MTA worker just laughed at him.
I've been buying metrocards going on three years now and that's never happened to me. You probably don't need to worry about it.
Some will laugh, most will scowl and then tell you to send your card to the MTA office and they'll send you a replacement in 4-6 weeks. It happened once to my girl is how I know this.
I sometimes have problems with the machine not reading the metrocard. Usually you just have to swipe it again, but a few times I've had to move to another machine.
The other fun thing to watch is when you're at one of those gated turnstiles and there's a line buiding up to get into the subway and a train is just entering the station and the person in front is having trouble with their card. The build up of tension is amazing. I've never been to war, but I imagine it's something like that.
(Exaggerating on purpose, people!)
I know what you're talking about, Shooty. The worse is the people who try to go through the turnstiles, remember they need a Metrocard to get through, and then park their purse on the ledge while digging for their wallet.
I've been one of those tourists, so I feel their pain.
Yet, I tend not to be similarly amused by Chicago tourists fumbling with the oldschool CTA card, as it usually just blocks me from gliding through the turnstiles with my Chicagocard Plus.
Hey, I'm a Second City denizen (the town, not the comedy shrine), and I didn't need that to strengthen my faith in 'em. New York's a great place, and the people are a big reason why, contrary to reputation.
And to be fair, the Chicagocard Plus doesn't always work as intended on the first (or second, or third) pass, which aggravates people behind me and infuriates me.
and if your card isn't working ... the machine is always about 3 feet away from a turnstile. Just buy a $2 one-use card, and move on. Jumping the turnstile is stupid.
/newyorkerrant
That's not old-school. Tokens: now we're talking old-school. I still have some lying around for nostalgia's sake.
In conclusion, I have no doubts in recommending the NYC subway and tip my hat to the people of NYC for their friendliness and courtesy in their hurried pace.
And in which you can get shot unexpectedly, if you're the wrong color.
You could've saved a few dollars by not buying a Metrocard for the kids. There seems to be some unwritten rule that kids in NYC ride free as long as they can duck under the turnstiles because I see kids with their parents do this all the time and no one says boo.
Due to this very event, I am, at least in my mind, a violent serial killer that should be locked away for society's benefit.
It's all relative.
Same goes for the New York area's commuter trains. I like the fact that you can actually stay out really late in the city and still get a train from Grand Central to a destination 100 miles away.
It all depends. When I lived in Williamsburg the service on the L train was freakin awful. It's one of the main reasons I moved to Manhattan--walking to work is one of the great luxuries of my life. I use NYC public transportation a lot, and it's generally good, but the commute on the subway during rush hour wore me down. The trains to the suburbs really are nice and getting to and from the airport is also a breeze now, for which I'm grateful.
There's a thrilling movie about this issue called "Kontroll", set in Budapest.
Well, you've got a point there--since I've used NYC's transit strictly as a visitor, I generally haven't used it during the weekday rush (which is the time I usually use Chicago's system), so I'm sure that gives one a different perspective.
The problem with the London Underground in the summer is the tunnels are too close to the surface for them to use cars that have air conditioning in them (which would typically go on top). At least, that's what I've heard.
(ducks)
The L has to be my least-favorite line. Running from 14th St. to Williamsburg ... guh, on a saturday night its all tight black jeans, greasy hair, and thick-framed glasses
I live on the N/W in Queens: great on weekends and in the middle of the day, a ####### nightmare during rush hour.
I live in Williamsburg now and the L has been considerably better lately than the last couple years, save for a few consecutive weekends earlier this summer. But yeah, there's few things about NYC life that's disheartening than going all the way to the stop only to find that it's closed for the weekend.
I'm a bit lucky in terms of the subway being crowded during rush hour. I get on at Montrose in the morning on my way to work in mid-town and two stops later, people start making the inevitable comparison to sardines.
Chicago trains going to the south and west are pretty darn good but heading north is a bit of a letdown. Amtrak charges a fortune to do it while both metra and amtrak don't have the great off peak services like you would expect a major city to have.
I like the NYC Subway and the Tube, although the Tube is way overpriced and I've never been in the summer. Both of them beat the hell out of the DC Metro, though.
Not sure I understand the comment.
Where in Williamsburg did you go? I'm curious to hear how outsiders like the neighborhood. My visiting friends always bug me to take them to the Barcade when they're in town.
My stop was at Bedford and I often had to wait for 3 or 4 trains before I could squeeze on. And once or twice a month it would just break down. Grrr.
The L has to be my least-favorite line. Running from 14th St. to Williamsburg ... guh, on a saturday night its all tight black jeans, greasy hair, and thick-framed glasses
LOL! There are a lot of jackasses in W'burg. I used to get sneers because I work in finance from people who made minumum wage working part-time at art galleries and still managed to live in $3000 a month lofts and take European vacations. I've decided that rich people who try to gain social cache by acting poor and sneering at us poor slobs who actually have to pay our own bills are my least favorite people in the world. Common People by Pulp, of course, is my favorite song.
Barcade is very very excellent. They even have Tempest!
What a terrific song. I had a friend who continually dated girls like that. I wanted to punch them all in the face.
Yes they do! They even have the original bartender game (I forget what it's called); the one where you pour mugs of beer as fast as the customers drink them. Later versions have you pouring root beer but at the Barcade, it's the earlier Budweiser-sponsored model of the game.
"Disco 2000" will always be my favorite Pulp song.
Where in Williamsburg did you go? I'm curious to hear how outsiders like the neighborhood. My visiting friends always bug me to take them to the Barcade when they're in town.
Barcade is very very excellent. They even have Tempest!
Heh--Barcade is, in fact, where I imbibed, and it's a blast. 80s video games galore, and a massive selection of draft beers. (I'm trying to think what beer it was that was chipotle flavored. It wasn't especially *good*, but it was interesting.)
Ate dinner at Sea. That was good, with a fun atmosphere, and very reasonably priced by NYC standards.
My regret is not making to the Brooklyn Brewery--shiette and I somehow managed to get lost trying to find it (I later discovered that they have directions printed on the bottom of their 6-pack cartons, which was kind of a kick in the teeth). Even that was kinda fun, as we ended up accidentally wandering an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on sabbath--we felt like we'd washed up on another planet.
Oh, man, if you were looking for the Brewery and wound up in that part of the 'hood, then you were way off. Did you confused North 11th Street with South 11th?
Especially if you started at SEA!
When my wife and I were in Rome we bought the "billetes" for the bus the first couple of days. (Never, ever get on the subway in Rome, by the way...stick to the surface.) We quickly realized that no one ever checked if we had billetes or not, but our guide book said you could get a big fine if you were caught on the bus without one. So we just kept a couple of them in our pockets for the rest of the time we were there. You're supposed to validate it by sticking it in a machine when you get on the bus, but we figured if anyone ever did check our tickets we would do the stupid tourist act and pretend we didn't know we were supposed to do that. Anyway, we never did see anybody ever check anyone's ticket, ever, and I doubt most people on the bus had one.
Very strange. Pretty damn slow too...it seems we stopped 10 times between the airport and the ballpark.
I live in Chicago, and ours is the worst of any major city I've been in, and getting worse by the day. We're seeing the result of decades of mismanagement and underinvestment, and it's reflected in low and declining ridership. Coverage is poor, staff morale seems to be horrible, and reliability--especially once you get off the train and onto buses--is terrible.
I lived in London for a while and was very satisfied with the Tube, but I was working retail hours; riding at straight-up rush hour is tough. Delays weren't common, but when they happened they always seemed to be epic, and while it gets you pretty much anywhere, the early closing hours sucked.
To round it out: in brief visits DC, SF, Philly, Barcelona, Madrid seem manageable, if a bit limited. Denver, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Detroit, and LA seemed so disappointingly unambitious as to barely even count as transit systems.
Oh, probably. Like I said, we managed to amuse ourselves anyway.
Especially if you started at SEA!
No-the Sea dinner and the 11th street adventure were on two different days.
Worst public transit I've been on was in Philadelphia - in retrospect, that shouldn't have been a surprise.
And of course, it's even worse than usual now, as the (much-needed) Brown Line renovation's ongoing. (That said, the delays that were forecast for rush hour commutes on the Red/Purple/Brown lines as a result of that project (i.e., doubled for the evening commute) just haven't happened, which has been a pleasant surprise--my commute might be about 10 minutes longer than it was before, but that's it.
We'll see if the proposed "circle line" actually comes to pass--that would improve coverage significantly. As it is, you basically have to go through downtown to get from any one part of the city to another, which is a joke.
finally, i second whoever rates ny transit highest. everytime i've been there, i've used subway and its great.
NYC does have the advantage of having a gazillion riders. That helps generate the cash to keep a good system running. The subway in Prague was pretty snazzy, I thought.
Sorry. Returning to NYC after spending a week on an island in Maine during which I never even had to ascend a flight of stairs has been a shock to my system.
I'm on the Greenpoint side of the Williamsburg/Greenpoint border (Bedford stop and walk). This is weird.
The L tells you how long until the next train gets there. That IMO, makes it the best line ever. I know the N and R do that too, but I don't use them ever.
That's how it is on the Los Angeles subway. I've been asked for a ticket maybe one out of every 20 times I've ridden the subway.
My favorite story in that vein is the time a friend of mine wanted to spend a day in Cold Spring, New York, a quaint Hudson River village of antique shops and cozy little cafes that she'd heard people rave about. Being new to the city, however, instead of going to Grand Central and buying a Metro-North ticket to Cold Spring, she went to Penn Station and bought a Long Island Railroad ticket to Cold Spring Harbor, a generic Long Island bedroom community. She wandered around the part of town nearest the train station for a little while before deciding that New Yorkers had an odd definition of "quaint" and heading back to the city. I broke the news to her as gently as possible when she got back.
I'm in Prospect Heights now (Grand Army Plaza), but will be moving in a couple of months to Windsor Terrace.
It's a grind sometimes unless you're lucky enough to have a slightly offset commute or a great line. I've noticed a huge difference in the number of people that are on at 8:30 AM compared to 9:00 AM.
I take the 2/3 (one of the most well-regarded lines) the 4 stops between Penn Station and Fulton Street for work and it's usually pretty reasonable. I leave enough time so I can skip a really loaded train and the next one is comfortable 95% of the time. There is a really narrow window where every train is mobbed.
I'm just a little past where the subways end so I take the LIRR. I imagine there's a way to take a bus from where I am to a better subway than the 7 train, but I can't imagine it's faster.
The game you are thinking of is Tapper (and Root Beer Tapper).
I believe it is available on Xbox 360 Live Arcade, but it would be no fun without the actual tap controller.
If you take the light rail in from O'Hare and want to get to Amtrak or Metra there are no actual signs in the train that tells you which stop is the closest to the station. So it becomes a guessing game, how far down the line you go hoping that the next one will be the stop you want. At least for me the newb who rarely takes mass transit.
You missed out on some wonderful rapd transit then. I probably used the metro or whatever it is called 15 to 20 times a day. Everyday I was all over the city quickly and easily. It always blew me away that I go to Vatican City then jump on the metro and within minutes I would walk out of the station and their would be the Colisuem.
Not to mention that staying in Rome is a hell of a lot cheaper if you stay on the outskirts and take the train in. My hotel was a third to a quarter of what it would have been if I had stayed in Rome proper.
####### b&t;.
I have to echo that statement. When it's hot and raining, the NYC subway is among the least pleasant places I've ever been. The combination of heat, standing water, filth, extreme crowdedness, and frequent delays puts you in a bad mood all day. I'm happy to be moving this weekend so I won't have to take the subway everyday anymore, though most of the time it's perfectly fine. You rarely have to wait long for public transportation during normal working hours, though weekends and late weeknights can be somewhat of a pain, especially with regard to buses. I much preferred the buses in London, which were more frequent and didn't stop so frustratingly often.
There are a lot of jackasses in W'burg. I used to get sneers because I work in finance from people who made minumum wage working part-time at art galleries and still managed to live in $3000 a month lofts and take European vacations. I've decided that rich people who try to gain social cache by acting poor and sneering at us poor slobs who actually have to pay our own bills are my least favorite people in the world.
Earlier today I was talking to a friend who lives in Williamsburg about all the people there who buy $100 t-shirts and $200 jeans to look like they're poor and unconcerned with their clothes. We came to a similar conclusion.
depends. If you're close to the 125th St. stop you can take the A instead (which runs express). I'm sure the C isn't as crowded as the 1, but its probably average.
you pretty much answered your own question. Its to curtail the guys you described.
Actually, you're right--the tunnels are extremely uncomfortable on humid days. However, the trains run so frequently (in my experience) that you hardly spend any time standing in the tunnels.
Ah--now I gotcha.
Yes, the automated voiceovers for getting to Amtrak and Metra ("Transfer to Metra and Amtrak trains at Quincy") are a joke, because the Quincy El stop is about 4 blocks from Union Station, and on the other side of the river; those announcements are completely useless unless you already know how to get to the Amtrak/Metra. (Same goes with the announcement at the Randolph/Wabash stop, which is a couple blocks from the South Shore trains.) And since, if you know how to get there, you don't need the announcements, the announcements are therefore worthless.
The only place those announcements are helpful is at the LaSalle/Van Buren CTA stop, which is right next to the LaSalle Street Metra station.
And if you're coming in from O'Hare, it's probably even worse--I don't think any stops on the blue line (which serves O'Hare) announce transfers to Metra and Amtrak lines, because they're not particularly close to the Metra and Amtrak stations (other than, again, the LaSalle stop).
Actually, for as much as I rag on Chicago's transit, it does have one advantage over NYC's--direct subway/El service to both airports. That's pretty nice to have.
They most certainly do not.
They aren't modified in any way, they are just unlimited weekly or monthly passes - once you use the card you have 14 minutes (or 18, some number like that) before being able to use it again. A pain if you legally - and stupidly - walk into a station going the opposite way you intended and there's no crossover. (NOTE - not speaking from experience. Really. Cough.)
Other than that you can make a profit over a week or a month pretty easily.
If there was any way to modify the card, that hack would be out online so fast it would make your head spin - hell, people would just TELL each other, forget the computer. $2 a ride is expensive.
Well there is, or was. If you bent the cards in a particular place you could get more rides on an expired card. I think the MTA may have "upgraded" the cards or their equipment so this can't be done anymore, or is harder to do.
Riding the subway was great in NYC; much better than in DC. My favorite part is the voice: "Stand clear of sliding doors please." And then, "STAND CLEAR of sliding doors, PLEASE," if someone is still standing there.
I met LL Cool J's nanny (or at least someone claiming to be said person) on the subway.
Yep and half the time you can't even hear them. Then on top of that once you get off the train there is virtually nothing I could find that would tell me where to go to get to Amtrak or Metra. Over the years I've taken the train in from O'Hare several times and like I said half the time I get it reasonably right the other half of the time I'm walking to get to the station.
Amtrak does get expensive though. I flew out to NY and on my way back I took the train into Chicago which by the way the station at O'Hare because of construction is next to impossible to find. They got arrows leading you all over the place, and then a one way ticket out of Chicago and into Wisconsin is 18 dollars for Amtrak. Metra is something like $7 but service is even more sporadic, then the cab ride is $33 and to top it all off the freakin cabbie ran out of gas on the way to my place and I ended up having to walk a half block because he wanted to get gas first before dropping me off. Normally I leave my car at the train station but since I was gone for awhile I didn't want to leave my car at the station for a week.
Thanks to the voice of the tram in the Atlanta airport (and my recording of it, for a radio show I was doing), the words "Please move to the center of the vehicle and away from the doors" will be in my brain til the day I die.
Holy crap, this thread jumped this afternoon. I also had no idea there were this many geeks in my neighborhood. I live the part of Williamsburg where people give me sh/t for not calling it Bushwick.
Also, I want to point out this little gem earlier in the thread:
the turnstiles has three messages: "go" "please swipe card again" and "insufficient fare." For some reason whenever tourists get message #2 they get all flustered and have no idea what to do, when all they have to do is SWIPE THE ####### CARD AGAIN....
/newyorkerrant
See, what makes this funny is that the poster drops this as a "new yorker rant", then GETS IT ####### WRONG. Sometimes you get the "Please Swipe Card Again" message, in which case, you swipe the ####### card again or try another turnstile. Sometimes, you get the "Please Swipe Card Again At This Turnstile" message, in which case, if you have a unlimited pass and you try another turnstile, you get blocked out, so your only recourse is to keep swiping the ###### at the same turnstile, and sometimes it just doesnt work and its a giant pain in the ass because like hell if the union token clerk is going to help you, so you end up having to either wait or blow two bucks on a new ####### card for NOTHING, just because the ####### MTA is too ####### corrupt to build a functional ####### mass transit system.
Now thats a New Yorker rant, ########.
Complete with whining and complaining about a transit system everyone else is jealous of. This would be the part of New York city that still makes me ill as a native.
Which we only have because we collectively don't fear walking like it'll give us herpes.
Cool story. For me it was reverse. I grew up a few miles down river from Cold Spring in Northern Westchester. The first time I saw the name for that Billy Joel album, I wondered what the #### he was doing naming an album after Cold Spring.
But I also live in New York half the year and have mixed feelings about the MTA, like most New Yorkers in this thread. Best feature: 24/7/365 service to all stations on all routes. In fact the genius of the city-never-sleeps 24-hour economy is that you can always catch a subway somewhere. London and Paris close up at night not because their citizens are sleepier but because the ####### last train leaves so early.
Worst feature of the NYC Subway: weekends where the express is running on the local track for reasons unknown. If you don't wake up knowing this, you have little chance of learning it underground. I have seen MTA workers browbeating big groups of people to move onto a different track, and everybody refusing to budge because they can't seriously believe that the downtown 1 is arriving on the uptown 2 platform.
Of course they ain't gonna help your condescending UES ass. Most probably are lazy ########, but they've always helped me the couple times I had a problem.
Yeah, well, I once saw the one on 86th and Broadway screaming " NO HABLO ESPANOL" to a bunch of German tourists, obviously just being an #######, but, like, so it goes. And let me tell you, that maroon jacket does nothing to hide the twinkies and enteman's that distend her belly into a puddle of lazy goodfornothingness. She's more representative of the lowest form of mankind than the addicts who panhandle the 1 train; at least they earn an element of my sympathy.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main